ELMER
L. HERTEL, a son of the Pasadena
merchant and citizen the late Herman Rudolph Hertel, is one of the
prominent young ranchers and business men of the Riverside community in
the district adjoining Hemet.

He was born at Pasadena June
16, 1889, and was liberally educated, attending the grammar and high
schools of his native city. He graduated A. B. from Leland Stanford
University with the class of 1911. For about a year after leaving
university he was in the Coalinga oil field and spent a similar time as
a rancher in the San Fernando Valley. Mr. Hertel established himself at
Hemet in the spring of 1914, when he bought his ranch of forty acres on
the northern limits of the town. To this he has since added seventy
acres, and he and his brother Herbert jointly own a ranch of 225 acres.
They do a large business, their diversified industry being represented
by fruit, alfalfa and hogs. Individually Mr. Hertel's chief distinction
in the agriculture and horticulture of Riverside County rests upon his
peach orchards. He sells and ships the peaches from these groves all
over Southern California, and a large number of nursery men have budded
their young stock from the Hertel trees, because of the large yield and
fine quality of the fruit produced by the Hertel orchards. The entire
ranch property owned and occupied by Mr. Hertel is another example of
the profitable development of land from a desert condition to a degree
of productiveness that none of the choicest agricultural lands in the
world can rival.

Outside of his ranch Mr.
Hertel is a director in the Riverside Mutual Fire Insurance Company and
is one of the influential members of the Hemet Chamber of Commerce, the
California Fruit Growers Association, the California Alfalfa Association
and the California Prune and Apricot Association. He is unmarried, is an
independent in politics and is affiliated with the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows, Fraternal Order of Eagles, and the Zeta Psi college
fraternity.

Source:
History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties
By: John Brown, Jr., Editor for San Bernardino County
And James Boyd, Editor for Riverside County
With selected biography of actors and witnesses of the period
of growth and achievement.
Volume III, the Western Historical Association, 1922,
The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL